Kuusou o Egaku
by X to the Zoltan
Summary: Translated: Building Castles in the Sky. Everybody has problems, even carefree dreamers. This poem takes itself way to seriously to escape having an Omake.
1. Kuusou o Egaku

My name is Ayumu Kasuga.  
I live in a dream.  
It is my glorious haven  
and my gloomy prison.  
Awake  
asleep  
it doesn't matter,  
the dream follows me  
wherever I may go.

Is it real?  
Does it matter?  
The dream is always there  
so why question it,  
even as it warps and changes,  
becoming wonderful  
bizzare  
pedestrian  
or horrifying?

You might wonder how I got here,  
my own little world,  
this dreamscape I built  
of air and light...  
but my friends don't.

We're all so happy  
so cheerful, clean and bright...  
they'd never imagine  
that I was driven here.  
They'd never consider  
that I'm hiding.

And why tell them?  
My voyage from old Osaka  
to mighty Tokyo  
was to be a new beginning,  
an awakening,  
an end to the endless dream  
and the start of my true  
life.

But it is not so easy,  
for here or there  
I am still who I am  
a small,  
plain,  
slow,  
dreamy,  
nothing from Osaka.

And so for my parents  
it was a new beginning.  
An end to the shouting,  
drinking,  
threats,  
slammed doors  
and awful silences...

And for they, too,  
it was not so easy,  
though they try every day.

My parents,  
through their problems,  
love  
and it gives them hope  
to win in the end.

And through the dream  
I yearn.  
For who I could be,  
if I awaken.  
And it gives me hope.

Someday I _will_ awaken,  
and blossom,  
and shine,  
and show the real world  
just what it's been missing!

Or is that another dream?


	2. Omake!

_ "If you have built a castle in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."  
_-Henry David Thoreau

"It sucks, huh?" Osaka asked when Yomi had finished.

The taller girl bent the poem in her hands, slightly uncomfortable. It wasn't so much having to critique a friend's writing—Yomi was very comfortable doing _that_—but rather because of what the piece had expressed. She wondered what Osaka's motive in showing her had been. "Well, to be honest…"

"Yup, it sucks pretty hardcore," Tomo interrupted merrily. "Totally awful. They should break your writing hand."

"Wow, you're an ace critic," Osaka commended, smiling. "How'd you get so good?"

"You bet your…"

"You didn't even read it, Tomo!" Yomi snapped.

"She wanted to know! Who else…?"

"_To be honest_," Yomi raised her voice for a moment to overcome Tomo. "I can tell that you're inexperienced as a poet, but I wouldn't say that it _sucks_. You might want to come back to it some day."

"Eh, thing makes no sense to me now, anyway," Osaka waved a hand dismissively. "Don't know what I was thinkin' when I wrote it. I… don't really know why I'm showin' it to you guys…"

"Yeah, she said _you guys_," Tomo grabbed for the poem. "Give it here!"

Glancing to Osaka for permission, Yomi handed the sheet over. "Now that I think on it, maybe it's not the kind of poem you write for other people to read. You…"

"What?" Tomo interrupted, turning the page sideways and raising her eyebrow as if inspecting a centerfold. "What's the point of writing a poem if you don't show it to anyone?"

"Many people just write to give their emotions an outlet. Journals, poems, stuff like that." Yomi looked at her best friend in annoyance. "It's especially useful for people who don't broadcast all of their thoughts and feelings at eighty decibels."

"Hmm…" Osaka's eyes unfocused. "An' then, after you're dead, the people go through your stuff an' read it, an' they're all, 'Oh mah goodness, Ah never realized how messed up she was!'"

"Uh, sure. I guess that happens sometimes."

"Heehee…" Osaka enjoyed that thought very much. "How'd you get to be so smart?"

"I don't know." Yomi shrugged. "I… I watch people and listen, I guess."

"And I suppose Yomi _reads?_" Osaka giggled softly.

"Yes, and that." Yomi grimaced. "That pun totally _didn't _get old when I was in the second grade. But you can learn all about different kinds of people by reading what they wrote. You never really know how totally different their frame of reference is until you've seen how they describe the world, what details they find important, the things they take for granted…"

"She's a real bookworm," Tomo agreed, "That's why she needs _these_." She snatched Yomi's glasses off of her face and donned them. The De-Bespectacled One made no move to retrieve them. "Whoa! Hey, I feel smart!"

"So I jus' wrote this to… get it off my chest?" Osaka blinked. "Or outta my arm, or whatever? Makes sense. Aw, you're pretty without the glasses… ever consider gettin' that laser surgery?"

"Huh?" Yomi took a moment to shift gears. "I… Not really. I've had these since I was little."

"Now I've got a headache…" Tomo reported, squinting at the page. "Holy crap, vertigo!" She jerked the sheet away and pulled it in. "Whoa, I'm entering a dimension of sight and sound!"

"Do not adjust your glasses," Osaka advised. Neither of the others got her joke.

With an exasperated sigh, Yomi took her specs back.

"I'd be real nervous lettin' them shoot lasers 'round my head," Osaka mused. "I mean, what if they _missed_ an' took out your… your corpus coliseum or somethin'? Then you'd have two brains, what wouldja do then?"

"That's _Corpus Callosum_, and they wouldn't…" the school bell crushed Yomi's sentence beneath its dulcet tone. "Damn. Time for literature class."

"Ohh, fun fun _fun_," Tomo grumbled, making a paper airplane with the poem, "I just can't wait to have Kimura undress me with his eyes…"

"You sure find some weird things fun," Osaka said.

"I was being…" Tomo tossed the airplane at her. Osaka made to catch it, but it bounced off of her forehead before she could. "Never mind."

The three set out, but before they got far, Tomo took Osaka's arm and stopped her. "Hey… Osaka… you're not, like, really hiding in your own head and all'a that, are you? That was some pretty depressing shit." In a rare tactful moment, Tomo remembered that she was talking about her friend's poem. "Er, stuff."

Osaka opened her mouth to answer, then looked down at the crumpled airplane in her hand. "I guess… I guess I'm not. Not anymore." She grinned, crushing it. "Y'know, I think I don't like that side o' myself too much. If I get my way, from now on…" she put one foot up on a chair and struck a noble pose, fists on her hips. "I will angst no more forever!"

"Oh, hell yeah!" Tomo cried appreciatively. "She's _kuh_-razy!"

"But…" Osaka raised a finger. "I'm not a horse."

"Huh?"

"An' besides, it'd look real stupid if they carved a big statue a' me outta a mountain. I don't know why anyone needs a horse nostril you can fit four houses in, anyhow."

"Ultraman might," Tomo offered.

"Tomo, you're just talkin' nonsense, now…"

**Finis**

(Author's Note: My defense for making an Omake? Well, all the cool kids were doing it! Yomi's appraisal of the poem is based on one a friend gave me, and Osaka's resolution is inspired, of course, by Crazy Horse.)


End file.
